Tag: nature
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Peekaboo!
This Black-throated Gray Warbler (Setophaga nigrescens) looked like it was playing a game of peekaboo when I took this photograph along the LA River at Frogtown this morning. In actuality, it was looking for insects on the underside of oak leaves. Black-throated Gray Warbler is one of several warbler species that primarily winters in Mexico…
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Photos From a Bird Walk Along the LA River
Today is a Wednesday. Wednesday is not a running day. I had no site visits or surveys scheduled. That means I go birding. This morning it meant that I would go birding along the LA River at Atwater Village, covering the section from Los Feliz Boulevard to Colorado Street, a stretch of river measuring a…
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A Year of Big Days: April
The last weekend of April this year happened to coincide with the average peak migration date for Southern California. I knew going into the weekend that I was going to do a yard Big Day, I just wasn’t sure which day I would do it. My wife and I both woke up at about 5:15.…
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A Year of Big Days: March
I woke up on March 28 at 4:30am, not initially planning on doing a yard Big Day that day. After the coffee kicked in during my morning reading I could hear a Great Horned Owl calling outside and my thoughts turned to the fact that I had planned to conduct one yard Big Day per…
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A Year of Big Days: January
I wasn’t sure when I woke up a little after 5am on Saturday, January 13 if it was going to happen. I came into 2024 planning a year of yard Big Days—one per month—in an effort to see how many species I could get in a year and how the numbers would change from month…
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2023: The Year in Birds
2023 was one hell of a year in many respects, both personally and professionally, but this post will only cover one aspect of that: birding. In the quest for both birds and outdoor experiences I made two significant trips, and managed to see (and photograph) a lot of new species. The Trips Volume-wise, most of…
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Pond Turtles Proposed for Federal Listing
Today, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to list the Northwestern Pond Turtle (Actinemys marmorata) and Southwestern Pond Turtle (Actinemys pallida) as threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act. At the time the agency initiated this listing process the two taxa were considered the same species, Western Pond Turtle, which is reflected in the…
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North Pacific Right Whale Critical Habitat to be Revised
On September 26, 2023 the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced a 12-month determination on a petition to revise the critical habitat designation for the North Pacific Right Whale (Eubalaena japonica) under the Endangered Species Act. The NMFS intends to revise critical habitat after receipt of a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity and…
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Wildlife Society Bulletin: California Condor Poisoned by Lead, Not Copper, When Both are Ingested
The September 2023 issue of The Wildlife Society’s Wildlife Society Bulletin contains a paper by Finkelstein et al. documenting the case of a California Condor that had ingested a lead fragment and copper bullet simultaneously. From the paper’s abstract: Lead poisoning from feeding on carcasses shot with lead-based ammunition is a well-known threat to wildlife.…
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Fish and Wildlife Service Announces 90-Day Findings for Five Species
Today, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) announced 90-day findings on petitions to add five species to the Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants under the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The Service found that the petitions to list the following four species presented “substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that…